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All Rise...

Judge Gordon Sullivan somehow feels incomplete.

Editor's Note

Our review of L'Atalante, published June
16th, 2003, is also available.

The Charge

"These are the witty, visually adventurous works of a pivotal film
artist."

The Case

The biographical portrait of Jean Vigo as the son of a famous anarchist who
made a few scant films before expiring from complications due to tuberculosis
threatens to overshadow his actual cinematic achievements. This overshadowing is
not helped by the fact that he was largely ignored upon his death, and that it
was only later that a new generation of filmmakers took up his work as a
brilliant example of early cinema. Although his work went on to influence
countless filmmakers—there's a reason that Criterion chose to release
Linsday Anderson's If… on the same day
as this set—Vigo's star perhaps never rose higher than when his lone
feature L'Atalante found its way to the Top Ten of the 1962 Sight and
Sound poll (though he would attain higher positions in later years). Despite
Vigo's critical revival and continued influence on filmmakers, his work has had
spotty availability. The lack of availability, the early (now defunct) genres of
the work, and their perception as early critics' darlings have given Vigo's
films a rarified air, like an exclusive club that only snobby film fans can
belong to. Criterion has changed all that, collecting all four of Vigo's films
into one beautiful set with extras that place this remarkable auteur in his
times and show just how important his brief cinematic achievements continue to
be.

The Complete Jean Vigo (Blu-ray) collects all four of the director's
films on one Blu-ray disc:

• "À propos de Nice" is a short (23 minute)
"city symphony" that takes a satirical look at the sunny, seaside
town.

• "Taris" is another short (9 minute) film that makes a
motion study of champion swimmer Jean Taris.

• "Zéro de conduit" looks at a French boarding
school with an anarchic eye following the uprising of a few of the students.

• L'Atlante is Vigo's sole feature, and it looks at the
life of Jean, a young man who has just married. On the honeymoon trip
(travelling by boat), his new wife grows restless. On a stopover in Paris, she
decides not to come back. Jean is overcome and must find his wife.

His posthumous fame demonstrates just how ahead of his time Vigo was, but
for all his visionary power, his first two short films fit rather neatly into
pre-existing film genres that were popular in his day. "À propos de
Nice" fits neatly into other so-called "city symphonies" of the
day, with the most famous example being Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie
Camera. Ostensibly a documentary (though the idea of what we now consider a
documentary hadn't really solidified yet), "À propos de Nice"
combines scenes photographed in Nice with stop-motion animation and other camera
effects. The film can be read on one level as a kind of "travelogue"
of the city showing us the different kinds of people who inhabit the city. On
the other hand it's a poetic piece of filmmaking that makes a political point by
the breadth of subjects it examines.

Similarly, "Taris" fits neatly into early cinema's experiments
with so-called "motion studies." In their earliest incarnations, these
films were novelties that filmed some kind of motion simply because they offered
something that still photography couldn't provide. However, as directors
mastered a great range of camera techniques (slow motion, etc.), they examined
more and more complex movements in greater and great detail. "Taris"
applies state-of-the-art cinematic techniques to the champion swimmer, Taris. We
see him sail through the water, dive into the pool, and even move underwater all
in combinations of slow motion, diverse angles, and startling close-ups. On the
page, this seems like a rather dry exercise, like football players watching game
reviews. In Vigo's hands, though, it's a poetic examination of the human form.
The director plays with the rhythm of his subject, alternating his fast swimming
with engrossing slow-motion shots that leave you wondering where the camera
could by and why it's not splashed in water. It also helps that the whole thing
seems to have been shot in an alternate world of black-and-white, where this
swimmer swims in some Sisyphean task.

Despite the beauty of these two earlier films, if Jean Vigo had died just
after their completion, he'd be little more than a footnote in cinematic
history, gone like the names of so many other filmmakers from that era. No,
despite the brilliance of those first films, Jean Vigo's reputation rests on his
longer work. "Zéro de conduit" and L'Atalante cemented his
place in the hearts and minds of cinema fans everywhere. And with good
reason.

It's difficult to define precisely what was going on in French cinema as
Vigo reached his artistic maturity. A movement dubbed "poetic realism"
was afoot in France, and Vigo's films fit fairly comfortably alongside those of
contemporaries like Renoir or Carné,. Poetic realism is an apt title as
well, because it perfectly captures the way in which directors like Renoir (in
Rules of the Game) and Vigo in "Zéro de conduit" took
real-life subjects in real-life situations but treated them with a sensibility
that doesn't feel gritty or down-to-earth. Instead, a film like "Zéro
de conduit" looks at the lives of the boys at a boarding school, their
petty authority figures and acts of rebellion, as if real life could itself be
an allegory for some deeper truth. Rather than using a myth or a fairy tale to
tell us about what it's like to live in a boarding school, Vigo uses a boarding
school to give us a deeper understanding of life. The result is a film that's
visually splendid, thought-provoking, and, above all, fun.

Finally, there's L'Atalante. It's a totally trite story: boy marries
girl, girl realizes being married isn't all it's cracked up to be, girl leaves,
boy pines, a search ensues. By all rights, the film should be just another
romantic comedy/drama, long since forgotten by all but the obsessive. Instead,
Vigo threw everything he had into L'Atalante, everything he'd learned on
his previous films, and imbued his final feature with the sense of heightened
weirdness that approaches realism from a different path. Using the water and its
movements as a motif, Vigo constructs a story that meanders like a river but
cuts just as deep. The film also has a dreamlike quality, a feverish intensity
that imbues every aspect of the film with double and triple meanings.

Jean Vigo is obviously the king of this set, but cinematographer Boris
Kaufman is the unsung hero of these films. Scholar Michael Temple (who appears
in the extras) takes great pains to point out that the relationship between Vigo
and Kaufman was one of true artistic collaboration, the young filmmakers pushing
each other to new heights of achievement as they sought the poetic visions we
see here. Kaufman would go on to great fame with On the Waterfront, but we get to see
him joyously learning his craft here.

Criterion brings us all four of these films in stunning transfers, given
their age. "À propos" and L'Atalante are presented in
their original aspect ratios of 1.33:1, while "Zéro de conduit"
and "Tarvis" are in their original ratios of 1.19:1. All four are
AVC-encoded. These are not pristine, perfectly preserved prints (though
L'Atalante did receive a thorough restoration in 2001). However,
considering their age, they look amazing. This Blu-ray set reveals fine detail,
appropriate grain, consistent contrast, and solid black levels. Despite the fact
that all the movies (and the copious supplements) are on a single disc, no
compression or authoring artifacts to be seen. On the negative side, expect
flicker, a bit of shimmer, and some damage to the prints. None, however, are
present to a distracting degree. The sound has not aged quite as well.
"À propos" was originally silent and has been given a nice score
by Marc Perrone, while the other three films get PCM tracks in uncompressed
mono. The sources aren't pristine, with distortions and some odd mixing now and
again, but they sound good for their age. The three sound features also have
English subtitles for the French audio.

The extras are simply staggering. Scholar Michael Temple shows up for a
commentary on all four films, discussing their history, filmic techniques, and
impact on the cinematic world. The video centerpiece is an episode from French
television that spends a little over 90 minutes surveying Vigo's life and work,
featuring interviews with friends and collaborators. "Les voyages de
L'Atalante" is almost as interesting. It's a 40-minute documentary
that examines the restoration of Vigo's final film, tracing the fate of its many
prints. We also get some alternate scenes from "À propos de Nice"
that show the different directions the film could have taken. The disc then
moves to more appreciative supplements. We get a 20-minute interview between
French New Wave auteurs Truffaut and Rhomer discussing the influence of
L'Atalante, a 30-minute piece with Russian filmmaker Otar Iosseliani (who
saw the film in the Russian film archive in the 1960s), and a short animation
from Michel Gondry detailing Vigo's influence on him. Finally, there's a nice
booklet with appreciate essay from a number of writers detailing their love of
Vigo's films.

All of Jean Vigo's films are old, French, and in black-and-white. For some
people any one of those things would be a deal-breaker. Certainly Vigo's films
don't have the same kind of quickly paced narrative drive we've come to expect
of mainstream contemporary movies. It takes a bit of an adventurous spirit to
take on The Complete Jean Vigo, but those who do will not be
disappointed.

This is one of those sets that doesn't seem too amazing on first
blush—another old French filmmaker gets his due. However, this is the kind
of set that has legs. Buy it and years from now you'll still be haunted by the
dissolves in "Taris" or the watery scenes of L'Atalante, and
certainly don't blame me if you suddenly find yourself wanting to go to Nice.
All joking aside, this is the kind of release that earns Criterion its sterling
reputation. Important—not to mention good—films given a
stunning presentation and surrounded by informative extras. Rent it if you have
no idea who Jean Vigo is, and if you know exactly who that anarchist Frenchman
was, you don't need me to tell you what to do.

The Verdict

Despite the brevity of his career, Jean Vigo is free to go.

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